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Highly -acclaimed Cardiac Surgeon, Dr Gopal Bhatnagar, known to be amongst the few in Toronto who specialise in 'beating heart surgery', has recently been named Chief of Staff at the Trillium Health Center in Suburban Mississauga.
In a brief informal talk with rediff.com, Bhatnagar said on October 10, "As Chief of Staff I have to ensure quality of performance by all the medical staff and they are about 450 of them at this hospital."
When asked if it make him the boss of all the doctors, Bhatngar said, "Nobody is the boss but, as Chief of Staff, my duty is to ensure quality health care for all our patients."
"What happens if there's any complaint against any doctor?"
Bhatnagar said, "Then I have to investigate."
His first love continues to be cardiac surgery -- 2-3 bypass surgeries a day and in some cases, he said in an earlier interview, people come for a second bypass when the tissues are scarred and as a surgeon he has to be more careful as the risk is higher.
But he finds not much of a risk in the first bypass. "With beating heart surgery, your age doesn't matter -- 75 years or 85 years makes no difference," he said.
He said he tries to bring home this fact to the South Asian patients who, if they are 65, believe they are too old and cannot undergo cardiac surgery. Bhatnagar says he invariably tells these patients "...these days 65 or 70 years is nothing. You are 70 and so are just waiting to die. You have stopped taking an active part in your health care."
To him such an attitude is "wrong as you won't contribute to your society by being well, healthy, happy and active as a person should live happily till the last moment of his life," he said.
Bhatnagar said, "Medically speaking there's a higher risk for South Asians because of their diabetes, the small size of their coronary arteries. But we are getting used to the smaller arteries now."
That was a challenge 10 years back, he said. "Now it is so common that I don't think smaller arteries is any more a risk factor from surgeon's perspective."
And least for Bhatnagar a large number of his patients who go under his knife are South Asians. Trilliaum Health Center is located in Mississauga that has large concentration of South Asians. And South Asians seek him because he himself is one of them and speaks and understands their language. He's a diminutive, very unassuming figure but he makes the South Asian community, in fact people in the City and province proud because of his specialization in beating heart surgery.
If a person has blockage at one place that's a simple bypass, Bhatnagar said. "We just make a small incision. If the artery is badly diseased, we have to open up the whole area to take out the cholesterol. We clean it right up and take the bypass with the lung.
"We require a particular technique and one has to be trained to be able to do that. If we make the artery too big, the risk of clotting is high. Then it becomes much more of an art."
Bhatnagar has that art. In medical terms it is called "coronary reconstruction." About 10 per cent of his patients go through this kind of "advanced coronary reconstruction and we see that far more in South Asian population."
For beating heart surgery, Bhatnagar said they have to have first class team of doctors, nurses and anaesthetists. Beating heart surgery means he doesn't have to stop the heart and connect it with the cardiac machine. Heart keeps on beating naturally while he performs the bypass.
He and his team at the Trillium Health Center perform an average of 2 to 3 operations a day, in excess of 400 operations in a year.
His new position as Chief of Staff gives Bhatnagar extra administrative work and that takes away about 1½ day a week of his normal time. "But I continue to perform my surgeries" that he loves best.
This busy cardiac surgeon has also an interest in helping raise funds for poor children in India. That was seen when he agreed to make a video presentation of life of poor children in a 'Aim for Seva' run hostile in India. His voice was almost cracking with emotion when he spoke about those children on October 7 at a fund raising dinner in Toronto.
He had also no difficulty standing in line with 200 other guests at the Queen's Park main dinning room on October 10 where Diwali was celebrated for the first time.